ACT III
Scene 1
The Castle on Zion. Alexandra’s Apartments. Alexandra. Joseph. Salome.
Enter Herod, Soemus, and Retinue.
Herod.
I’m home again. (To Soemus.) Does it stil bleed? The stone,
Though meant for me, hit you because in just
That nick of time you came to tell me something.
Your head for this time made your King a shield,
But had you stayed at post——
Soemus.
I had not then
Received the wound nor rendered you the service,
If it be worth the name. In Galilee
That man is stoned at least who’s so foolhardy
To get at loggerheads with you and me,
Since I’m your shadow or your speaking-trumpet
Or what you will.
Herod.
Yes, there the men are true—
That is, to ends of theirs; and since these ends
With mine go hand in hand, to mine as well.
Soemus.
How true this token shows you—that you find
Myself in your chief city.
Herod.
Ay, indeed
I had not thought that I would meet you here,
For when the King is far there’s double need
Among the stiff-necked provinces for watchers.
What was it then that drove you from your post?
’Twas sure some other impulse than the wish
To prove me that it might unjeopardised
Lie tenantless; or thought’s instinctive feel
That a flung stone was here to intercept.
Soemus.
I was come here to advertise the viceroy
Touching disclosures of a wondrous kind,
And tell them orally in all due haste.
I would apprise him that the Pharisees
Seek even the stubborn soil of Galilee,
Although their work is vain, to underburrow.
But all too late my warning came; I found
Jerusalem in flames by then, and could
But help extinguish them.
Herod (giving him his hand).
And that you did
With blood of yours!—Ah, Joseph! you? Good-day!
I thought to find you other here; but good;
Yet, for the nonce, go bring me Sameas
The Pharisee, who’s held by Captain Titus
A prisoner in the mode the Scythians use.
The ironside Roman drags him, fastly bounden
Unto the tail of the war-horse he rides,
Hither and thither, since the holy zealot
Spat after him i’ the open market-place.
Now he must run as he may ne’er before
Have run if he’s no mind to have a tumble
And go a-draggling. Then and there ’twere better
That I had rescued him as I went past.
I’ faith, ’tis sure I owe him thanks alone
That all the serpents who until to-day
Crawled stilly from my foot, are known to me.
Now I can stamp them piecemeal when I will.
[Exit Joseph.
(To Alexandra.) I give you greeting, and from Antony
I am to make announcement that a river
Cannot be brought to judgment; and a King
Within whose land it flows with less of right
Because he did not earth it in. (To Soemus.) I were
Long since again come hither, but when friends
Together meet who seldom see each other,
They hold them fast. And so ’twill be with you
(I treat you with a foretaste) now I’m host
And have you at the longed-for last again.
And you with me must set the figs a-shaking
Just as, perforce, I aided Antony,
Pah, gluttony! in stream of old Falernian
To smother lampreys and call many a prank
From out our bygone times to jog remembrance
With freshening fillip. So, resolve your mind
To do like service. If I scarce may have
Enough of the triumphant hero in me
To have you so commanded to my presence
As he commanded me to his, with show
Of hearing me on some insipid charge,
His brow like Cæsar’s wrinkled and his arm
With lightning and with thunderbolt beweaponed,
And all to be assured—this was the ground
On which he did it—that I came for certain,
If such be so, at least to-day’s good chance
That puts you in my hands I’ll use to profit
And say, as he, when speeches on your office
Begin—“If you conduct it as you should
It does not need your every wink o’ the eye.
You come so seldom that it seems you’re loath
To be here!”
Soemus.
Lord, you do me an injustice;
And yet I have no cause to come too often.
Herod (to Salome).
And you here too? So you have learnt at last
To trick your wits, when you meet Mariamne,
With fancy-thoughts that you look in a mirror
And spy your own reflected counterpart?
’Twas oft my counsel when you eyed her sourly;
It never pleased. Take not the jest amiss.
There is no evil doing in the hour
When friends are come a-meeting. But where is she?
I heard it said that she was with her mother
And so came here.
Salome.
She went when she had learnt
That you were nearing.
Herod.
Went? Impossible!
But good. She did it since ’tis solitude
Befits reunion. (Aside.) Heart, will you bear her anger
Nor rather make amends? (Aloud.) I follow her;
Her delicate feeling’s right.
Salome.
Go, self-deceiver!
The fright of seeing you recalled to life,
The shame of having credited your death,
The greater shame of her spoiled widowhood—
O’ersmooth it all with fondling gloss of shyness
The maiden feels who ne’er has known a man
Nor seen the shivering woman taken in sin!
She went from fear!
Herod.
From fear? Look round about you,
We are not here alone.
Salome.
That’s opportune!
If before witnesses I bring my plaint
It will be guaranteed your surer ear
And crushed the harder underfoot.
Herod.
You place
Yourself twixt her and me? Have then a care!
You may be trampled piecemeal.
Salome.
This time, not!
Although I know how small the sister counts
When you are dealing with the Maccabean,
This time——
Herod.
I tell you one thing! If, the day
On which she first was given to my sight,
A man were risen in accusation ’gainst her,
He had not easily obtained my hearing,
But yet more easily than now. Take that for warning.
I am so heavy in her debt that she
Can owe no debt to me. I feel that deep.
Salome.
Ah, so she has free charter?
Herod.
Any mask
To wear that she thinks well for your hoodwinking
If she would kill the drive of time with you.
Salome.
Then—then I must be mute. What use in speaking?
For whatsoe’er I chose to tell you, ever
Your answer would be ready—mummery!
At least this mummery has had good luck.
Not me alone but all the world with me
It’s taken by the ear; it costs you honour
And me my rest, however you may swear
That Joseph’s only done what duty bade
When he—see to’t if any man believe you!
Herod.
When he—what underdrift is lurking? End it!
But no—not yet——(To a servant.) I bid the Queen be craved
To grant to us her presence. Is it not
As though the whole o’ the world were spider-clean
And all had nested them within my house,
That when for once I see the blue of Heaven
They forthwith might o’erhang it with their webs
And do the work of clouds? True, strange it is
That she comes not. She should, sheer-forced, have kissed me
Caught in the ungoverned all-compelling moment,
And then she might have vexed her lips with biting
When even at that the Ghost refused its quittance.
(To Salome.) Know you what you have ventured? Know you, woman?
I was rejoiced! D’you understand? And now—
Once on a day the Earth when I was thirsty
Spilled from my hand a goblet filled with wine
Because it fell to quaking ere my lips
Could drain it; I forgave it since I must;
On you I could avenge me.
[Enter Mariamne.
Scene 2
Herod. Mariamne. Alexandra. Salome.
Herod.
Fling you down
Before her, who in all these witness-eyes
Have put the offending tarnish on her name,
And I’ll not do it!
Salome.
Ha!
Alex.
What may that mean?
Herod.
Well, Mariamne?
Mar.
What commands the King?
I have been summoned and I have appeared.
Alex.
Is this the wife who swore to kill herself
If he returned not hither?
Herod.
This your greeting?
Mar.
The King bade summon me that I should greet him?
I greet him; and thereby the work is done.
Alex.
You’re sore in error. Here you stand arraigned.
Herod.
There was a charge preferred. Before I gave
The charge a hearing I sent word to beg you
Come hither, but in truth with no desire
That you should counter it with your defence,
Only because I think that of itself
’Twill lose its breath and die before your presence.
Mar.
To hinder that I should again begone.
Herod.
What, Mariamne? You were never ranked
Among those souls of despicable kind
Who, when their foeman’s countenance or back
Comes to first gaze, forgive and fresh their grudging
Because they are too weak for genuine hate,
Too tiny for the fuller, greater mood.
By what then is your deepest so transformed
That now so late you should companion them?
What? When I left you had for me farewell
And I had thought that this a claim would give me
Upon your welcome. You deny me that?
And you stand here as though the berg and vale
Still lay between that kept us so long sundered?
You step aback when I would come anear?
Is’t then that my return is hateful to you?
Mar.
How should it be? Indeed it gives my life
Again to me.
Herod.
Your life? What word is this?
Mar.
You’ll not deny you understand the word.
Herod (aside).
Can she then know it? (To Mariamne.) Come!
[Mariamne does not follow.
Leave us alone!
(To Alexandra.) You’ll pardon?
Alex.
Ay!
[Exit, followed by the others.
Mar.
So craven, then!
Herod.
So craven?
Mar.
And also—how’s it nameable?
Herod.
And also?
(Aside.) ’Twere horrible! I’d never quench it in her!
Mar.
His wife, free-willed, may grave-ward follow him,
The headsman’s hand may thrust her under earth—
All’s one if he make sure she dies. He leaves her
No time even for self-sacrificial death.
Herod.
She knows it!
Mar.
And is Antony a man
As I till now believed, a man like you,
Or else a demon, as you must believe
Since you’re in desperate doubt if in my bosom
Some last lorn duty-sense, some remnant pride
Would make a stand against him when, all dripping
With blood of yours, he faced me as a wooer
And made assault of storm to pass the time
Which the Egyptian Woman leaves him free?
Herod (aside).
But how? but how?
Mar.
At least he were compelled
To have you dead before he came a-wooing,
And if you feel yourself—I were not able
To think it, but I see’t—so null a nithing
That you despair his scale to counterpoise
With the pure metal of your manhood’s worth
In your wife’s heart, what justifies you then
To hold my worth so light that you could fear
Myself would never spurn the murderer back?
O double insult!
Herod (breaking out).
Tell me for what price
You learnt this secret! ’Twas not lightly venal!
A head was pledged me for it!
Mar.
O Salome,
How well you knew your brother!—Question him
Whose treachery told me what he had received.
From me expect to hear no answer more.
[She turns away.
Herod.
I’ll show you quickly how I’ll question him!
Soemus!
[Enter Soemus.
Scene 3
Herod. Mariamne. Soemus.
Herod.
Is my kinsman Joseph here?
Soemus.
He’s tarrying with Sameas.
Herod.
Lead him hence!
I gave a letter to him. Have the letter
Forthwith delivered. You afford him escort
And see that all be loyally fulfilled
Whatever this letter orders.
Soemus.
’Twill be done.
[Exit.
Herod.
Whate’er you may suspect or think or know,
You have misprised me.
Mar.
On a brother’s murder
The seal you’ve planted of necessity
To which the neck must bow though sharp the shudder,
But you’ll ne’er have the plausible success
To stamp this seal upon my murder too;
That murder must remain the thing it is,
An outrage that at most may be repeated
But never, never can be overgone.
Herod.
I would not have the courage for an answer
Unless, whatever the deed I may have ventured,
I had not been assured of the event;
But then I was assured and was so only
Because I set my all upon the hazard.
I did what on the field of fight the soldier
Is wont to do when all his last’s at stake.
He flings the standard which has led him onward,
On which his fortunes and his honour hang,
Determined in the mellay of the foemen
But not because he thinks to give’t for spoil.
He brings the wreath, which now no more by courage
Only by hope forlorn was to be reached,
The victory-wreath, albeit tattered, with him.
You called me craven. If the man is so
Who fears a seated demon in himself,
Then I at times am craven, but alone
When I must reach my goal on crooked by-paths,
When I must duck my head and make a show
As though I were no more the man I am.
Then anguish takes me that I might too soon
Erect my bearing, and to tame my pride,
Which, lightly strung, might spur me on thereto,
I knit into me what is more than Self
And which with me must stand or suffer fall.
Know you what waited on me as I went?
No dual fight, and less by far a court;
A tyrant whimsy-willed to whom I must
Forswear myself, and yet I surely had
Forsworn no tittle if—I thought of you
And gnashed my teeth not once—and whatsoe’er
He may have bid the Man and King within me,
Haling me on from gorge to gorge, yet holding
My teasing quittance back in sinister silence
—I took it all as patient as a slave.
Mar.
You speak in vain. In me humanity
Is shamed by you. My pain each soul must share.
Who’s human is like me, nor has he need
To be my kin, or woman as I am.
When you with murder secret-still had robbed
My brother, only they could share my weeping
Who might have brothers; and the rest might all
With eyes still dry of tears, step from me sidewards
Refusing me their pity. But a life
Has every man, and none allows his life
Be taken from him but by God alone
Who was the Giver of it. Such an outrage
Is damned by mankind’s universal race,
Is damned by Fate who suffered it begin,
’Tis true, but not succeed; is damned by you.
And if the Human in me is through you
So deeply hurt, what must the woman feel?
How stand I now to you and you to me?
Scene 4
Herod. Mariamne. Salome.
Salome (entering hastily).
What plan you, Man of Horror? Ah, I see
My husband led away; and he conjures me
Beseech you for your mercy—but I wavered
Because I bear him grudge nor understand him,
And now—and now I hear things gruesome whispered.
They say—they lie! Say so!
Herod.
Your husband dies!
Salome.
Before he is condemned? Ah, never, never!
Herod.
Himself is his condemner; for the letter
That forfeits him to death was in his hands
Before he played me traitor, and he knew
What penalty it was awaited him
If done; he put him ’neath that penalty
And in its spite he did it.
Salome.
Herod, hear me!
Do you know that for sure? I did accuse him
And felt beneath my charge the base of right;
I had my grounds therefor—and that he loved her
Was open fact; he had indeed for me
No single further glance, no press of hand—
He was by day about her when he could be.
And in the night his dreams betrayed to me
How firm she held his thought in grip; all that
Is true and more; but, for all that, it follows
Not yet that she must love him in requital
And less than all that she—ah no, ah no!
’Twas jealousy that tore me on—forgive!
(To Mariamne.) You too forgive!
O God, and time flies fast! They said—shall I
Then love you as I hated you? Then be
No longer dumb! Speak! Say that he is guiltless
And plead for his reprieve even as myself.
Mar.
He is!
Herod.
In her construction, not in mine.
Mar.
In yours as well.
Herod.
You must then have known nothing;
And now a nothing can be his excuse.
And if I make him now a gift to death
Without foretrial, ’tis because my will
Is bent to show you that my thought of you
Is nowise base and mean, and that I rue
The rash-born word that fell from my first wrath,
And more because I know that he can have
Nothing to say to me.
[Enter Soemus.
Scene 5
The Same. Soemus.
Soemus.
The bloody work
Is brought to end; but all Jerusalem
Stands stock-still asking why the man whom you
Ordained to represent your person when you
Made journey hence, now at your coming back
Should be compelled to lose his head.
Salome (collapsing).
Woe’s me!
[Mariamne goes to catch her.
Salome.
Away, away! (To Herod.) And she?
Herod.
Content you, sister!
Your husband has most heinously deceived me—
Salome.
And she?
Herod.
What you think is not so.
Salome.
Not so?
How then? Your will’s to save her? If my husband
Deceived you heinously she did it too;
For what I said is true, and every man
Shall know it though he not yet know. And you
Shall wash yourself in her blood as in his,
Else ne’er be clean again. At least that’s so!C
Herod.
By all that I hold sacred——
Salome.
Nay then, name
His misdeed to me if it were not such.
Herod.